What goes up must…

I received a message of request for support for a charitable cause. It’s always nice to help, especially towards altruistic aims. But as much as I want to give, I replied that this time, I could not, and added that they pray for either my electric bill to go down or I get an additional source of income.

I probably said this before. I’ll probably repeat myself, I’ll try to say it in a different way. This past months, I feel like most of my salary gets sucked up to pay our electric bill. Despite our best efforts to bring it down including limiting the experience of comforts of air conditioning, the numbers continue to do a high jump. I got some shock when it hit triple the usual when the rate went up to 14 per kilowatt hour. I guess the consumers did their best and their most creative to make adjustments. Then the powers that be seem to intentionally want to push over the edge by hiking up the rate 3 more notches up to 17. These increases occur in a matter of a couple of months. Doesn’t jeepney fare get to wait a span of some years before they could rise a peso? But these electricity rates seem to have stilts for legs that they stride for long distances in a matter of a few steps. I suppose it would be understandable if the payee gets to flaunt the bragging rights of efficient service. Doesn’t power go out every now and then. Don’t we have another day-long power outage in or area on Sunday? Are not incidents like this on regular rotation for all areas? There are short power outages; there are very long power outages. There are unannounced power outages; then there are unwelcomed announced power outages. With this track record, they have the audacity to execute a raise. It’s like a restaurant that raises prices on the menu when some of the food are not available, service crew is slow, and air conditioning is low. The sad thing is that it’s only restaurant in town; and we can’t do much of anything.

This surge comes along with the increasing and sometimes fluctuating, but most of the time, increasing price of oil ever since some big bully of a nation decided to trample down his modest neighboring nation; sending the whole world to commercial confusion, just as it recovers from a health hazard.

Over the past months, some common and unexpected commodities have joined on the rocket propelled bandwagon up the hill or mountain (since the climb up seems to be covering a larger distance). What are you doing there, white onion? You don’t seem to go well with oil. But you seem to want to join the ride up. They say that the increase is driven up by scarcity. What happened? Did people suddenly decide to eat raw white onions for breakfast, lunch and dinner? We didn’t hear of any pest that attacked the crop.

At least, one could understand the fundamental need for sugar which has since followed the trend. In case you’re diabetic, sugar really does take up a great deal of necessity in food and beverage preparation. I tried putting the 99 sugar on my oat meal, and the sweetness didn’t seem to change a bit. I heard that a bottling site of a popular soda has decided to close shop. Where have all the sugar gone? How have someone or some people have had the ability or influence or protection to manage to hoard an unbelievably gigantic amount of white powdery sweeteners in multiple warehouses? Come on. There is a shadow of larger personality looming behind this horrible hoard.

Now, senators’ sentiments are getting pumped up high without sugar. What I don’t get is why would someone make an import plan when he doesn’t plan to import? Why would a teacher make a lesson plan when he does not intend to teach that lesson? Why would a businessman go through the efforts of drafting a business plan when he does not have any intention to have a business? That simply does not make sense.

In the middle of all these, I’m still waiting for the 20 peso worth kilogram of rice.

As we wait for that, let’s manage through the fiesta after the pandemic. I heard there have been and will be some restrictions.

“As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owners except to feast their eyes on them?” Ecclesiastes 5:11